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I grew up in Mississippi. I was there for 13 years, and then when I turned 13, I moved out to L.A.

I went to college in Mississippi; I'm from Louisiana.

I'm from the Mississippi delta originally.

I decided early on that I wanted to participate in the greater American experience, rather than the parochial one in Mississippi. But I have an urge as a writer to meld the Southern experience into the larger American one.

I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it.

In Mississippi, you don't admit that you're gay. It's just an awkward thing down South, which is sad.

I was always very aware of the nature of the place where I was growing up in Gulfport, Mississippi, how that place was shaping my experience of the world. I had to go to the Northeast for graduate school because I felt like I had to get far away from my South, be outside it, to understand it.

I would never want to live in L.A., and I made that decision years ago, so I never chose that path for myself, although I have much respect for those that do it at a high level.

Only remember west of the Mississippi it's a little more look, see, act. A little less rationalize, comment, talk.

I live in L.A., I grew up here, it's not that crazy for me because it's L.A., you know?